Chertoff’s Dry Humor on Weather

WASHINGTON —  Looking for a strategy to prevent disasters like Hurricane Katrina? Try regulating the weather, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff joked Monday.

At the beginning of his remarks to state emergency management directors, Chertoff noted the snowstorm that hit the East Coast on Sunday, joking that it had been arranged “to give a little additional urgency to these proceedings.”

“Seems the problem we have in this country is we either have too much moisture or too little moisture, depending on whether you’re on the coast or in the interior,” Chertoff said. “If we could average it out, we could prevent some of the disasters we’ve been faced with.”

The next hurricane season begins June. 1.